B.C. NDP leader Adrian Dix out to shed 'Risky Dix' label

This isn’t the sort of place one might expect to find a potential premier: Inside an east Vancouver cafe and bar, filling fast with burly, tattooed beer drinkers. But Adrian Dix looks at home. This is a regular haunt, just around the corner from his constituency office.

Mr. Dix has been seen in more rarified settings lately, including hotel ballrooms and corporate boardrooms, pitching himself to captains of industry as a man of prudence and cautious reason.

Five months ahead of a general provincial election, B.C.’s NDP leader enjoys a substantial lead in opinion polls over Premier Christy Clark. He doesn’t intend on blowing it. But appealing to all people isn’t easy, especially if one’s natural constituency is on the left, in a province that usually tilts right.

It’s a balancing act. In one breath Mr. Dix speaks of fiscal realities, labour productivity and the need for more business investment in his province. But his immediate agenda, if his party takes power in May and he becomes premier, involves corporate tax hikes and the elimination of balanced budget legislation.

Mr. Dix insists there is no contradiction. “My view is pragmatic and fiscally driven,” he said in an interview Thursday.

Of course, Ms. Clark’s Liberals warn that it’s a trick, more of the old NDP bait-and-switch. They call the NDP leader “Risky Dix,” a label introduced almost a year ago during a $1-million negative advertising campaign. The timing of that effort — 17 months before the May, 2013, election — smacked of desperation, counters Mr. Dix.

Ms. Clark, he says, “is a very smart person and a good politician, but she’s been campaigning since becoming leader [in February 2011]. That is the weakness of Premier Clark. It’s always Candidate Clark.” She lurches from one position and policy initiative to the next, says the NDP leader. Her Liberal government is “constantly adjusting tactics, rather than taking an outlook that’s longer than three months.”

A Dix-led NDP government would be different, he promises. “We’ve got to do less, and do it well. We’re going to do what we can afford to do. I may be wrong. That may not be the right approach. But it’s the lesson I’ve learned.”

Mr. Dix has never governed. But he was a key administrative figure during the B.C. NDP’s tumultuous reign in the 1990s, serving for three years as chief of staff to then-premier Glen Clark. He resigned his post in 1999, after admitting to having crafted a false memo relating to a casino licence application. Circumstances around the casino application ultimately forced Mr. Clark from office, as well.

Mr. Dix expects the Liberals to launch another nasty campaign — ‘‘one of the most negative we’ve ever seen” — in the next election cycle, sometime in the spring. The NDP won’t respond in kind, he insists. It will instead assail the Liberal government for its fiscal record, which in some respects has been dismal. Since coming to power in 2001 under then-leader Gordon Campbell, the Liberals have posted seven budget deficits, and the provincial debt has almost doubled, to $66-billion. The government’s latest budget forecasts have been wildly inaccurate, forcing revisions. Given all of these failures, B.C.’s balanced budget legislation has been rendered meaningless, says Mr. Dix, and therefore should be scrapped.

A Dix-led NDP government will raise corporate tax rates, from 11% to 12%. The Liberal government has already pushed back plans to bring the rate down to 10%, so there’s not much to quibble over on that front. Mr. Dix has also proposed to reapply a capital tax on banks and other financial institutions that operate in B.C. The levy was scrapped two years ago, removing tens of millions of dollars from provincial coffers. Mr. Dix would use the windfall to create post-secondary education grants for students.

He does not anticipate any other changes to business tax rates. Personal tax rates on incomes under $150,000 would not change under an NDP government, he says. For higher income earners, he makes no guarantees.

Critics say Mr. Dix isn’t showing enough cards; they say he’s withholding too many intentions. He says his party won’t release its full platform until well into the new year, once the May election looms. Don’t expect a lot, he says. “We’ll lay out a prudent platform and we’ll say to people, ‘Here are our first priorities. This is where we start.’ And some people will be disappointed, because there will be items that we support but can’t afford and won’t be in the platform.”

Better to offer little and deliver, than promise a lot and fail to make good. “What I’ve tried to do, however imperfectly, is when I meet with chartered banks in Toronto, when I meet with industry folks here, is build a sense of understanding,” says Mr. Dix. “This is going to be a government without surprises.”

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